Acumen
by Rot-Chan
Summary: Sakura stabs his flesh, feels the blade absorb slick muscle, blood - but misses Sasuke's heart. Precious heart, a heart so valued above all others it almost makes Sakura sick. Can love sicken the weak? Or does it madden the strong? Sasu/Saku, one-shot.


**Title**: Acumen

**Author**: Rot-chan

**Genre**: angst/drama/gen

**Characters**: Sasuke, Sakura; Kakashi

**Summary**: Sakura misses Sasuke's heart. Precious heart, a heart so valued above all others, it almost makes Sakura sick. Can love sicken the weak? Or does it madden the strong?

**Notes**: or, what would have happened if Sakura had at least made an attempt to kill Sasuke in chapter 484. I like to toy with what-ifs when writing canon fiction instead of AU. This was heavy but interesting for me to do. I hope you enjoy it.

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There's a moment when his guard is temporarily, lost - forgotten. Forgotten is more appropriate. Forgotten, due to the tumultuous furor of emotions still lingering in his heart, the pain in his eyes.

A vast wasteland spread out before them makes her too bitter. Sakura had looked into the water and remembered the Caterpillar, childhood fairy tales, the pool of tears. She had come back, against reason and better judgement. She'd waited, shrouded in a metaphorical darkness to strike.

Where did Alice's journey end?

The knife is pushed fully into his flesh; and this is success in itself. Absorbing then sliding through slick muscle and blood, pumping throbbing vessels veins wrapped up tendons and tiny, tiny bones. Rabbit bones (rabbit pulse); heart throbbing in a manner too quickly and vulnerably for him to be real.

Sakura can recognize the signs of loss of life in an instant. Instantly recognizable! She sounds like some genius in her field. She could push the kunai at an acute angle, jam it bluntly and reach a ventricle, his heart. (So Sakura could see those tell-tale signs, and watch him die.)

But now she's lingering, almost wavering - a voice whispers, if she restrains from pressing any further she could possibly repair the tissue of the left lung, the shredded musculocutaneous nerves -

Then as if agreeing to the blade, it's almost like he presses himself upon it. As if it is a welcomed hurt; but it can't possibly be, Sakura is imagining it, that would be completely _irrational_. They've discussed it in quiet and serious voices, dissecting and calculative voices, how mentally damaged he'd become; the desire to only defend himself and this perilous self-destruction, and it couldn't be possible.

Slickly sliding into the deltoid muscle, she pushes the knife at an angle in further - but Sakura misses Sasuke's heart. Precious heart, a heart so valued above all others, standing out all these years and it almost makes Sakura sick. Can love sicken the weak? Or does it madden the strong?

An ataxia builds in her chest and her fingers feel numb. The blade is going to fall - unsure of how or when but it's going to drop out of his flesh one way or another. The horrible pit of calamity is budding in her middle, reaching her throat _because__you missed his heart._

Sakura's grip is loosening on the handle, her uncertainty is influencing her body _and if you don't do it he will he'll kill you and he'll ruin it, he'll-_

Imagining for one instant, guilty and condemnable enough almost to die, desperate: taking advantage of this viscous moment of confusion and snapping his neck. Infusing enough chakra, threading it through her fingertips to make it smooth and simple; gripping his facet joint between her thumb, gripping the side of his head with her palm for stability - then turning her wrist, jerking violently with such resilience!

And then the body would go limp. No time or room for questioning or hesitancy, and time was already slipping past cool and slick as water.

But time is the most unforgiving impetus.

He turns. It's over.

It's over, as Sakura can feel herself being hurdled through something like a vacuum, which she'll later numbly recognize as an instant of fate. Decisions, decisions. But really, it's fate.

Over: because she glimpses one bloodied eye black and flat and **melanoid** and her stomach twists; adrenaline is a hot fever throbbing in her gut, her upper intestine flickering with an invisible heat as bile creeps and vomit threatens to rise up, she's going to throw up, her heart is beating too fast -

_(Shoving the blade deeper the point presses through skin and then there's hot white pain in her side bright and brilliant as a fizzling star.)  
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"Sasuke..." Sakura had said his name one night before going to sleep a while ago, like a sort of taboo. But she wasn't unsure - maybe it wasn't as long ago as she'd like it to be, ideally. Maybe she only wanted it to be long enough so she couldn't remember saying it - or anything else - clearly, like a sticky and too-humid time in summer where one day blurs into the next.

It had hurt, because it was almost forbidden to say his name when she was alone. When Sakura was with Naruto, it was better. They'd spoken his name in a joint agreement once - they had to get it done. To bring him back they _had_ to, they couldn't give up, of course not...!

Knowing the secret in her heart had been a lingering malady. Eating away and eating her up, night after night; because Sakura did not hold that same thought or meaning behind Sasuke's name any longer. When had the shift come? Violently and abruptly, all past ideals stricken from her body as if she'd contracted a disease.

Formulating a plan and so sure it would work - she'd do it for him, she'd step in in his place. Valiantly take the blade and press it into his flesh and stop his heart - Sasuke's heart. After what felt like decades of time slipping through Naruto's hands, something he didn't deserve, everything would become utterly, abnormally still.

But she'd never considered that the variable leading to failure could be herself.

"Sasuke", Sakura had said his name in her thoughts two nights ago, as she'd done for so many months. Almost praying with that lingering childish hope in her heart that something as absurd as telepathy could possibly exist. If only it could have been that simple, for him to hear her concern. But thoughts don't connect or intertwine.

Just as now, Sakura almost has time to hope, _I wish you were cursed with my thought. _

**:::::::  
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They take her body to a quiet chamber. Badly injured, a degree of blood loss and it looks serious - but were there any fatalities? The nurses ask in distressed and quiet voices, Did anyone die, was anyone killed?

"No, no one," Kakashi answers for them. Or in other words: there was nothing gained.

He enters the room soundlessly and sits by her bed; carefully, after many years of practice of dealing with injuries and death among comrades and friends, Kakashi ignores the heart monitor and bandages. The work of insanity, he briefly muses; but it brings no gratification, he doesn't comprehend it, the meaning (or end) behind it.

"Her personal possessions - they're here..." A nurse nurse hesitantly hands him the opaque package of her belongings: tools and weapons, clothes, shoes no where to be found and bloodied cape conveniently missing. Taking it gingerly, as if holding it will burn Kakashi. He rests it in his lap. The door wheezes shut.

Moments pass. It's strangely still in this corner of the hospital. Kakashi opens the bag up slowly as if trying not to wake her - even though Sakura will not wake up for another three days. Driven by curiosity to see what she took along with her. Still wondering what went through her mind.

Something flutters softly to the floor, so quickly Kakashi almost doesn't take notice of it. At a first glance it appears to be nothing; but then he picks it up, a scrap of folded white paper. It takes a moment to register it.

**_Sasuke_**, it reads in the tentative handwriting of almost a stranger. But the end of the 'e' is finished with her neat cursive stroke.

So she'd written his name on a slip in her pocket, before setting out without telling a soul.

Kakashi briefly closes his eyes. The piece of paper is not discarded, but instead placed in her bedside drawer. He walks over and stares out of the window, as if waiting for perception to come and touch upon them to bring them some resolve -

Yet if it did, he knew it would carefully glide over her. Because Sakura had already distilled her own dreams.

**::End::**

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_[A/N:_ so I hope this was as good as I wanted it to be. Weirdly enough, i haven't written canon fiction in a very long time. Since about December of 2010. Wow. I really need to stop my AU obsession. Thanks to all who read or comment!]


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